06/08/2011

I have found myself in discussions about designing the organization of the future - one deeply rooted in a culture of innovation. The longer the conversation goes on, the more uncomfortable and restive the organizational leaders get. Finally, one says, "This all sounds [interesting, wonderful, or impossible]. Show me where it is being done it in the real world."

One place where it is being done - and has been for over 50 years - is W. L. Gore & Associates, the manufacturer of Gore-Tex and over a thousand other products from guitar strings to industrial sealants and vascular grafts used in heart surgery.

Bill Gore started the company in 1958. He quit DuPont to start a business aimed at imagining and commercializing new uses for polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE)-the material used in Gore-Tex. But he wasn't only interested in inventing new materials or selling products, he wanted to create an entirely new kind of company that unleashed and inspired every person in it, and put as much energy into finding the next big thing as bleeding the last big thing, one that was strongly profitable and uniquely human.

The questions that drove Gore in the beginning are crucial questions leaders everywhere must face today:

Is it possible to build a company with no hierarchy - where everyone is free to talk with everyone else?

Can there be a successful company where there are no bosses, no supervisors, no managers and no vice presidents?

Can a company preserve a sense of family and collegiality even as it scales up?

Can there be a successful company with no "core" business, one that is as focused on creating the future as on preserving the past?

Gore found ways answer "yes" to each of those questions. And W. L. Gore & Associates became a model for both organizational and product innovation (not to mention a remarkable business success).

Gore's organizational model remains a critical part of its success as the company builds on entrepreneurial innovation. It has evolved through ongoing and often dramatic external changes-globalization, IT breakthroughs, heightened competition, and economic ups and downs, among others-and the company's organic growth.

Because the goal was "maximizing innovation" rather than "maximizing profits," the company was organized very differently, in ways that would make traditional leaders shudder:

No "core" business; people can put lots of energy into finding the next big thing, rather than being forced to milk the last big thing. Just because a division makes medical equipment doesn't mean it can't make guitar strings (this actually happened at Gore, which now has a big share of the guitar-string market).

No management layers and no organization chart: Gore wanted to get rid of the "facade of authoritarian hierarchy."

No bosses, ranks, or titles; plenty of leaders. Leaders are chosen by their groups, "authority" only comes because people want to follow you. Leaders don't tell people what to do; instead they provide mentoring and support.

"Lattice" management: "... a dense network of interpersonal connections where information can flow in all directions, unfiltered by an intermediary. In a lattice, you serve your peers, rather than a boss, and you don't have to work 'through channels' to collaborate with your colleagues."

The CEO is voted in by the employees based on her being "someone they want to follow."

Associates find the teams they want to work with, and who want to work with them.

10% time for "dabbling" (which has produced most of Gore's products). This long predates Google's 20% time.

Ideas are allowed to gestate until they either bear fruit or show themselves to be impractical.

If you have an idea, you can recruit people to help work on it and create a team, by convincing them it's worth working on.

An associate can say "no" to any request, but commitments are considered serious.

Compensation is based on a comprehensive peer review; generally at least 20 peers are involved. No other ranking, degrees, experience, etc., has any impact on compensation; only the peer review.

Every associate is a shareholder (the company is privately held), and there is profit-sharing.

Plants are kept small so people know each other; grouped together regionally so that cross-pollination can occur. Financially this is far less efficient but the innovation benefits vastly overbalance any short-term costs.

Projects regularly review themselves to make sure there are real opportunities, that the company can win in the marketplace, and that the product has enough value to be profitable.

Gore has been included in every one of Fortune's "100 best companies to work for."

We work hard at maximizing individual potential, maintaining an emphasis on product integrity, and cultivating an environment where creativity can flourish. A fundamental belief in our people and their abilities continues to be the key to our success.

How does all this happen? Associates (not employees) are hired for general work areas. With the guidance of their sponsors (not bosses) and a growing understanding of opportunities and team objectives, associates commit to projects that match their skills. All of this takes place in an environment that combines freedom with cooperation and autonomy with synergy.

Everyone can earn the credibility to define and drive projects. Sponsors help associates chart a course in the organization that will offer personal fulfillment while maximizing their contribution to the enterprise. Leaders may be appointed, but are defined by 'followership.' More often, leaders emerge naturally by demonstrating special knowledge, skill, or experience that advances a business objective.

Freedom to encourage, help, and allow other associates to grow in knowledge, skill, and scope of responsibility.

The ability to make one's own commitments and keep them.

Consultation with other associates before undertaking actions that could impact the reputation of the company.

Gore's philosophy is that individuals don't need close supervision; what they need is mentoring and support. Each new associate is assigned a sponsor to decode the jargon, demystify the lattice, and circulate him or her among several teams, helping find a good fit between his or her skills and the needs of a particular team. A sponsor makes a personal commitment to an associate's development and success. As the organization has grown, teams of sponsors have begun to meet annually, to take a broader look at the possibilities for the associates under their guidance. Associates are free to seek out a new sponsor if they wish.

Gore also believes that leadership has to be earned. It embraces what it calls "natural leadership." Leaders at Gore gains influence by developing a track record for getting things done, and excelling at team building. They have to be talent magnets. As one associate explained "We vote with our feet. If you call a meeting and no one shows up, you're probably not a leader because no one is willing to follow you." Once in a leadership role, that person's job is to strengthen and make his or her team and colleagues successful. Because Gore associates are involved with multiple teams, they may a leader on one and a regular member on another.

Thousands of executives have visited Gore over the years, but there's not much talk about the company, and very little emulation. Lattice management distributes the power; command and control does not exist in an organization that is is about as flat as it gets.

What would an organization have to do to transform in the direction that Gore has taken?

1. Rethink the fundamental reason for the organization. At Gore the fundamental reason is innovation. If the fundamental reason is profit over innovation, the Gore model will not be a good fit.

2. Shift power away from the top. Very few people in power want to change management when it means giving up power, and those who believe it's worth giving up the power don't believe that anyone else is willing to do it.

3. Be adequately committed. A superficial or half-way commitment is not strong enough to fuel an organizational shift this deep. People will detect ambivalence and hypocrisy and will not enlist.

4. Cast off. Many organizational changes are implemented full speed ahead without untying from the dock or raising anchor. This leads to much wasted energy, frustration, possible exhaustion, and virtually no head way or progress. An organization needs to release the bonds to the old ways as it shifts.

5. Make sure the shift has integrity. An organization does not have to emulate everything Gore does, not should it. But the combined components of the shift have to come together as a complete, working system. As most organizations will chose to do no more than they have to do, the shift needs to be viewed as a whole system with the recognition that carving it up into smaller parts will not work. See 3 and 4.

Of all human activities, creativity comes closest to providing the fulfillment we all hope to get in our lives. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi calls it full-blast living.

Creativity is a central source of meaning in our lives. Most of the things that are interesting, important, and human are the result of creativity. What makes us different from apes-our language, values, artistic expression, scientific understanding, and technology-is the result of individual ingenuity that was recognized, rewarded, and transmitted through learning.

When we're creative, we feel we are living more fully than during the rest of life. The excitement of the artist at the easel or the scientist in the lab comes close to the ideal fulfillment we all hope to get from life, and so rarely do. Perhaps only sex, sports, music, and religious ecstasy-even when these experiences remain fleeting and leave no trace-provide a profound sense of being part of an entity greater than ourselves. But creativity also leaves an outcome that adds to the richness and complexity of the future.

Csikszentmihalyi, author of Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, devoted 30 years of research to how creative people live and work, to make more understandable the mysterious process by which they come up with new ideas and new things. Creative individuals are remarkable for their ability to adapt to almost any situation and to make do with whatever is at hand to reach their goals.

If there is one world to express what makes their personalities different from others, it's complexity. They show tendencies of thought and action that in most people are segregated. They contain contradictory extremes; instead of being an "individual," each of them is a "multitude."

Here are the 10 antithetical traits often present in creative people that are integrated with each other in a dialectical tension.

1. Creative people have a great deal of physical energy, but they're also often quiet and at rest. They work long hours, with great concentration, while projecting an aura of freshness and enthusiasm. This suggests a superior physical endowment, a genetic advantage. Yet it is surprising how often individuals who in their seventies and eighties exude energy and health remember childhoods plagued by illness. It seems that their energy is internally generated, due more to their focused minds than to the superiority of their genes.

This does not mean that creative people are hyperactive, always "on." In fact, they rest often and sleep a lot. The important thing is that they control their energy; it's not ruled by the calendar, the dock, an external schedule. When necessary, they can focus it like a laser beam; when not, creative types immediately recharge their batteries. They consider the rhythm of activity followed by idleness or reflection very important for the success of their work. This is not a bio-rhythm inherited with their genes; it was learned by trial and error as a strategy for achieving their goals.

2. Creative people tend to be smart yet naive at the same time. How smart they actually are is open to question. It is probably true that general intelligence is high among people who make important creative contributions.

Howard Gardner remarked in his study of the major creative geniuses of this century, a certain immaturity, both emotional and mental, can go hand in hand with deepest insights. Mozart is a familiar example of this combination.

People who bring about something new seem able to use well two opposite ways of thinking: the convergent and the divergent. Convergent thinking is measured by IQ tests, and it involves solving well-defined, rational problems that have one correct answer. Divergent thinking leads to no agreed-upon solution. It involves fluency, or the ability to generate a great quantity of ideas; flexibility, or the ability to switch from one perspective to another; and originality in picking unusual associations of ideas.

Yet there remains the nagging suspicion that at the highest levels of creative achievement the generation of novelty is not the main issue. People often claimed to have had only two or three good ideas in their entire career, but each idea was so generative that it kept them busy for a lifetime of testing, filling out, elaborating, and applying.

Divergent thinking is not much use without the ability to tell a good idea from a bad one, and this selectivity involves convergent thinking.

3. Creative people combine playfulness and discipline, or responsibility and irresponsibility. There is no question that a playful attitude is typical of creative individuals. But this playfulness doesn't go very far without its opposite, a quality of doggedness, endurance, perseverance.

Nina Holton, whose playfully wild germs of ideas are the genesis of her sculpture, is very firm about the importance of hard work: "Tell anybody you're a sculptor and they'll say, 'Oh, how exciting, how wonderful.' And I tend to say, 'What's so wonderful?' It's like being a mason, or a carpenter, half the time. But they don't wish to hear that because they really only imagine the first part, the exciting part. But, as Khrushchev once said, that doesn't fry pancakes, you see. That germ of an idea does not make a sculpture which stands up. It just sits there. So the next stage is the hard work. Can you really translate it into a piece of sculpture?"

Despite the carefree air that many creative people affect, most work late into the night and persist when less driven individuals would not.

4. Creative people alternate between imagination and fantasy, and a rooted sense of reality. Great art and great science involve a leap of imagination into a world that is different from the present. The rest of society often views these new ideas as fantasies without relevance to current reality. And they are right. But the whole point of art and science is to go beyond what we now consider real and create a new reality. At the same time, this "escape" is not into a never-never land. What makes a novel idea creative is that once we see it, sooner or later we recognize that, strange as it is, it is true.

Most of us assume that artists-musicians, writers, poets, painters-are strong on the fantasy side, whereas scientists, politicians, and businesspeople are realists. This may be true in terms of day-to-day routine activities. But when a person begins to work creatively, all bets are off.

5. Creative people trend to be both extroverted and introverted. We're usually one or the other, either preferring to be in the thick of crowds or sitting on the sidelines and observing the passing show. In fact, in current psychological research, extroversion and introversion are considered the most stable personality traits that differentiate people from each other and that can be reliably measured. Creative individuals, on the other hand, seem to exhibit both traits simultaneously.

6. Creative people are humble and proud at the same time. It is remarkable to meet a famous person who you expect to be arrogant or supercilious, only to encounter self-deprecation and shyness instead. Yet there are good reasons why this should be so. These individuals are well aware that they stand, in Newton's words, "on the shoulders of giants." Their respect for the area in which they work makes them aware of the long line of previous contributions to it, putting their own in perspective. They're also aware of the role that luck played in their own achievements. And they're usually so focused on future projects and current challenges that past accomplishments, no matter how outstanding, are no longer very interesting to them. At the same time, they know that in comparison with others, they have accomplished a great deal. And this knowledge provides a sense of security, even pride.

7. Creative people, to an extent, escape rigid gender role stereotyping. When tests of masculinity/femininity are given to young people, over and over one finds that creative and talented girls are more dominant and tough than other girls, and creative boys are more sensitive and less aggressive than their male peers.

Psychological androgyny is a concept referring to a person's ability to be at the same time aggressive and nurturing, sensitive and rigid, dominant and submissive, regardless of gender. A psychologically androgynous person in effect doubles his or her repertoire of responses. Creative individuals are more likely to have not only the strengths of their own gender but those of the other one, too.

8. Creative people are both rebellious and conservative. It is impossible to be creative without having first internalized an area of culture. So it's difficult to see how a person can be creative without being both traditional and conservative and at the same time rebellious and iconoclastic. Being only traditional leaves an area unchanged; constantly taking chances without regard to what has been valued in the past rarely leads to novelty that is accepted as an improvement. The artist Eva Zeisel, who says that the folk tradition in which she works is "her home," nevertheless produces ceramics that were recognized by the Museum of Modern Art as masterpieces of contemporary design. This is what she says about innovation for its own sake:

"This idea to create something is not my aim. To be different is a negative motive, and no creative thought or created thing grows out of a negative impulse. A negative impulse is always frustrating. And to be different means 'not like this' and 'not like that.' No negative impulse can work, can produce any happy creation. Only a positive one."

But the willingness to take risks, to break with the safety of tradition, is also necessary. The economist George Stigler is very emphatic in this regard: "I'd say one of the most common failures of able people is a lack of nerve. They'll play safe games. In innovation, you have to play a less safe game, if it's going to be interesting. It's not predictable that it'll go well."

9. Most creative people are very passionate about their work, yet they can be extremely objective about it as well. Without the passion, we soon lose interest in a difficult task. Yet without being objective about it, our work is not very good and lacks credibility. Here is how the historian Natalie Davis puts it:

"I think it is very important to find a way to be detached from what you write, so that you can't be so identified with your work that you can't accept criticism and response, and that is the danger of having as much affect as I do. But I am aware of that and of when I think it is particularly important to detach oneself from the work, and that is something where age really does help."

10. Creative people's openness and sensitivity often exposes them to suffering and pain, yet also to a great deal of enjoyment. Most would agree with Rabinow's words: "Inventors have a low threshold of pain. Things bother them." A badly designed machine causes pain to an inventive engineer, just as the creative writer is hurt when reading bad prose.

Being alone at the forefront of a discipline also leaves you exposed and vulnerable. Eminence invites criticism and often vicious attacks. When an artist has invested years in making a sculpture, or a scientist in developing a theory, it is devastating if nobody cares.

Deep interest and involvement in obscure subjects often goes unrewarded, or even brings on ridicule. Divergent thinking is often perceived as deviant by the majority, and so the creative person may feel isolated and misunderstood.

Perhaps the most difficult thing for creative individuals to bear is the sense of loss and emptiness they experience when, for some reason, they cannot work. This is especially painful when a person feels his or her creativity drying out.

Yet when a person is working in the area of his of her expertise, worries and cares fall away, replaced by a sense of bliss. Perhaps the most important quality, the one that is most consistently present in all creative individuals, is the ability to enjoy the process of creation for its own sake. Without this trait, poets would give up striving for perfection and would write commercial jingles, economists would work for banks where they would earn at least twice as much as they do at universities, and physicists would stop doing basic research and join industrial laboratories where the conditions are better and the expectations more predictable.

Racheal Parsons is selling these cool "Bi-Vocational" T-shirts to promote and support Bi-vocational ministry as a preferred way to live out leadership in Christian community. Contact Racheal Parsons-Wells rparsons.wells@gmail.com to get a purchase a shirt and join wave.

03/04/2011

The idea is for the PCUSA denomination to host a global Passion Summit on the off years of the General Assembly, similar to how the “Big Tent” functions now. The Summit would link through virtual media large regional gatherings (possible Synods) across the United States and globe. A variety of process modalities (Theory U, Appreciative Inquiry, Conversation Café, World Café) at the regional gatherings would help cultivate and harvest the deep passions, visions and ideas which are emerging within the PCUSA consciousness across cultural, theological and ecclesiological worldviews and geographic locations. (I would especially encourage us to look at Theory U as a contemplative and inclusive discernment model.)

This information would be linked and shared through virtual media to every regional gathering in real time, allowing everyone participating to see and discern the deep threads that are emerging. It would allow us to collectively listen to the voice of the Spirit as it speaks through energy, passion and calling. This emerging awareness, would be harvested in a variety of forms at a central hub and then pushed back out to the regional gatherings to be creatively enacted through self organizing “prototypes” (described below). Individuals and smaller groups at the regional level would self organize around individual passions and intentions seeking to implement in their own contexts the deep passions and threads emerging in the consciousness of the whole denomination. These self organizing groups within each region may stay within established group identities to do their work (i.e. Presbytery groups, local congregations, Sunday school classes, women’s groups) or they may form a new action groups, communities and networks around a shared missional initiatives and intentions which cross traditional identity boundaries and geographies.

During and after the Passion Summit Synods, Presbyteries and local congregations would reorganize themselves as they seek to provide support and guidance to these local initiatives and self organizing groups. These governing bodies would continue their regulatory practices as before, but would also have available new energy, ideas and initiatives arising from below from which would help shape their identity and work. These governing bodies would be invited to provide leadership by listening, giving permission, providing support and equipping communities to embody the passions and intentions of the Spirit. The Passion Summit would not replace our current system but would instead provide alternative ways of being together and structuring ourselves so creativity and innovation would be encouraged.

A “prototype” which would be one of the paradigms for self organizing groups is a short term event, program or experience that embodies the original intention and passion but is also designed for praxis learning and co-evolving. These prototypes would have built within them opportunities and expectations to share with the larger system what is being learned so everyone benefits from what is being learned at a local and contextual level. Congregations, Presbyteries and Synods would organize themselves around this learning and insights that emerge allow the whole system to evolve. We would not only learn from the best practices emerging from the prototypes but would co-evolve as a denomination in the process.

The Passion Summit, through the regional gatherings would be open to anyone affiliated with the Presbyterian Church, with an emphasis on those who are at the margins of our congregations and communities. The traditional voices and centers of our denomination (elders, pastors and judicatory leaders) would seek make their regional gathering as diverse as possible and function as the hosts and facilitators of meaningful conversation not as decision makers, gate keepers or vision castors. The whole process would intentionally seek to listen to the outer edge of our denomination where good ideas naturally arise. After the traditional centers of power seek to practice the art of hosting and listening they would become equippers and midwives of passion and intention. The process reverses “hierarchical” and “centered” approaches to organizational formation trusting that energy and passion will create their own structures.

A Passion Summit and a traditional General Assembly would honor the organizational forms of more worldviews and allow for both “hierchacal/centered” organizational forms and “self organizing/decentralized” forms of governing. This type of process would also allow us to redefine the important and essential

These types of global discernment processes are already being done by large non-profit organizations and global corporations. The technology is already available and just needs to be harnessed to serve our Reformed theology and values.

The Reasons For Alternative Discernment Processes

The Presbyterian Church (PCUSA) finds itself in the midst of the creative tension of re-formation. This is not new for the Presbyterian Church or the Universal Body of Christ. God is always incarnated in the particularities of our lives and experiences with the invitation to be renewed and transformed. This re-formation however, is especially significant, because it involves shifts in our foundation and the need for the emergence of new structures, not simple a creative rearrangement of what already exists. This re-formation includes changes on the “being” level, not simple a rethinking of the surface structures.

The energy from which I share the Passion Summit idea arises from a concern that we do not yet have the appropriate containers (processes) for the new organizational structures to emerge which can hold and honor the complexity of our domination. By a “container,” I specifically mean the ways in which we gather with one another at all levels of our communal life (small groups, committees, sessions, Presbyteries, Synods, General Assembly) We do not have or use appropriate “social technologies” which allow for creativity and emergence to happen. The General Assembly, as well as most of our meetings, are not intended to be a creative spaces for new ideas and passions to emerge and take shape. This is true at many levels of our denominational life. New information poured into the same container and processed through the same structures will not be able to produce the new systems which honors and facilitates the new “ways of being” Christian community. I do not believe new organizational structures and forms will emerge from the same containers (processes) which we have been using. This is echoed in the statement by Albert Einstein, “The problems that exist in the world today cannot be solved by the level of thinking that created them.” Consciousness and form arise mutually and are interdependent. I believe the “postmodern” consciousness already exists for many in our denomination, but it is being poured into “modern structures” which are inadequate in order to be creative and constructive.

At this point, instead of seeking to significantly change all our organizational structures and processes in local churches and in the denomination, we should create alternative structures which can then be in dialogue with the established structures, potentially transforming both into something novel. My assumption is that the PCUSA is being invited to become a more complex system, able to integrate an additional and emerging “postmodern” worldview within its already large umbrella.

I understand there to already exist multiple worldviews within our denominational umbrella and reformed tradition, each worldview giving rise to unique and appropriate theologies, eclessiologies and organizational forms which are appropriate to those worldviews (premodern, modern and postmodern). The process of growth and development for any system when healthy, is one of integration marked by the process of transcending and including. Whatever we become in the future must transcend the complexity of our past through the process of inclusion, not exclusion. We can not go back, nor can we become more simple. Each worldview must be able to “find itself” within the umbrella, which means their needs to be multiple theologies, ecclesiologies and organizational forms within one umbrella.

Our General Assembly and the “Book of Order’” which are primarily “modern” organizational structures, need to be included and transcended, not illuminated or changed to the point where they no longer honor or speak to those in a modern worldview. I think the majority of Presbyterians in North America are working from a modern worldview. Our current system is a creation of that worldview and still works for many of us. So I don’t believe it should be replaced.

Again, in order to hold more diversity we must become more complex, not less. The only way to relieve tension created by paradoxes of multiple worldviews is to move to a higher level of consciousness where the tension no longer exists. A more inclusive perspective which emerges from a more integral consciousness allows the diversity of worldviews (traditional, modern and postmodern) to exist as creative energy not anxiety. Ultimately, I believe this looks like some type of “Reformed Denominational Federation.” However, I don’t believe that this type of structure or organizational form can emerge until we have been able to fully integrate the values and “ways of being” of postmodernism. Seeking to hold within one PCUSA umbrella the values, theology, ecclesiology and organizational forms of premodernism, modernism and postmodernism will create enough paradoxical energy that a new level of consciousness can emerge. As a denomination, I believe we are another 10-20 years away from that capacity. However, we have the capacity to experiment with postmodern denominational structures, which I believe the Passion Summit represents.

In summary, my idea of a Passion Summit is not to fix the problem of denominational decline, but instead an invitation to create a different type of “container” from which the Spirit can birth a new level of consciousness. From this more “integral” consciousness appropriate organizational forms will naturally form and take shape. The Passion Summit is one way a new consciousness can emerge not through lessoning the creative potential of chaos, but through giving it new channels and direction from which to do its creative work of expansion. Consciousness and form arise together.

My hope is this idea joins with many others in generating an environment of new ideas, innovations and experiments in Christian community throughout our denomination. I appreciate feedback, responses and reflections and the opportunity to process with other in open and contemplative dialogue.

Those who create and lead worship are about the spiritual art of “sacred alchemy” as the seek to creatively invite their community into the practices of transformative liturgy. This six week class, hosted by the Ecclesia Project, will invite worship leaders to cultivate the knowledge and practices of which lead to dynamic and transformative worship experiences. Worship teams, committees and lay persons are especially encourage to participate. Participants are welcome to stay for a Creative Lectionary Study with worship team participants of James Lees, CCC and Kinesis.

07/27/2010

There are at
least four ways or approaches for doing organizational change.Each approach is valid in its own
right and all are needed for effective and lasting change.However, we may find ourselves more
drawn to one or two of these approaches based on our unique skills or
personality, but each approach should be honored and validated.

Each week I will explore one of these approaches. This week, "Working ON the System."

Working
“On” The Organization

We are working
“on” an organization when we by our perspective or by our actual location are
on the outside of the organization working from a place of relative objectivity.From this perspective we are and
can be more objective since we are not integrally bound or emotionally
entangled in the life of the system which we are seeking to change.We have the organization, it does not
have us.

A common and
often effective approach to working “on” a system is the approach of a
“consultant.” One who can objectively see the organization and help the system
see itself.The consultant
can then work “with” the system to shift and change as needed.The consultant is invited to be
an objective partner in helping the organization, even though the consultant
will never essentially be “in” the system.

An more
challenging, but also needed, posture to working “on” a system is the
“activist.”An activist is often
by location on the outside of a system, yet seeks to make the system and its
outcomes more just, humane and healthy.The activist from an outside perspective can help the organization see
itself and provide needed motivation for change, especially when the
organization does not internally see the need for change or choices to be
unaware of their practices.The
activist can speak truth to power. An activist will probably never be invited into the
organization, so must seek to work from the outside or “on” the system to
effect change.This
“outsider” posture, however makes the activist position more difficult and
challenging at making lasting change within an organization.The activist may have an
objective perspective and be morally right, but will not have the emotional and
social capital with the organization as a tool for change.

The advantages of
working “on” a system is the objective perspective that can come from not being
entangled within the emotional, mental and psychological complexity of the
organization.Working “on” a
system allows one to bring fresh perspectives, resources and energy into
systems encouraging and inviting them into needed change.

The disadvantages
of this posture also lie in this “objective” perspective.When we make anything or anyone
an “object” it becomes a good target for our own unconscious projections.It often removes us from the emotional,
connectional and subjective forms of awareness which are needed and valid in a holistic
approach to change.The emotional,
interpersonal and subjective forms of awareness are also needed tools and
vehicles for promoting change.When we consciously take “on,” or find ourselves working “on” a system
we must be intentional to not stand on the outside of the organization and
through rocks at what are really our own unconscious projections and emotional
issues.

07/05/2010

I recently attended the US Social Forum in Detroit,
Michigan.It was powerful and
moving to see hundreds of marginalized groups and communities of people creatively
claiming and envisioning their individual and communal lives.They had some appropriately harsh
words for the systems and powers which they experienced as oppressing them, but
the overall spirit of Forum was not one of criticism or blame, it hopeful and
empowering.People were organizing
themselves in a variety of ways for shared learning and common action.They were doing more than reacting or
pointing angry fingers, they were practicing the hopeful art of CREATIVITY!

My experience at the US Social Forum has invigorated my
vision and work with the Ecclesia Project.I don’t want to
state it to strongly, but I understand our work as one liberation.We are seeking to give power back to
everyday people to envision and create the kind of Christian communities, which
are spirit filled and life giving to them.This kind of liberation is not against an oppressive power
hungry majority.Instead it
a resistance to the powers of order, convenience, traditionalism and
conventionality, which seem to have a hold our powers of novelty and
responsibility.The Presbyterian
Book of Order is not an overtly oppressive document and had its time and place
in shaping a unique reformed voice in American denominational life.But I believe it has served its purpose.

This week at the Presbyterian General Assembly in
Minneapolis our denomination will seek to make significant changes to the Book
of Order.My hope is that they are
successful, but I don’t think this will all be the switch which open’s the
flood gates of ecclesial experimentation and creativity.So what will?That is the deeper question.

My next blog, will be an explanation of four different ways
to do systems change.

1)Working
“on” the system

2)Working
“in” the system

3)Creating
“alternatives” to the system

4)Shifting
the “consciousness” from which systems are flow

Each of these ways should be honored and supported for
effective and lasting change.The challenge seems to be which one or ones are we especially called and
equipped to undertake.

04/08/2010

I love a good question. Nothing like a well thought out question to raise the
consciousness in a room, or to freak out a dinner guest. There are actually people in my life
who will request that I not ask any
questions when we go out to eat. It
tends to dampen the mood they say.
I, on the other hand, tend to associate any table with a good question. Just as the meal is food for out bodies
a good question is food for the soul.

Unfortunately, we as Church are lacking good questions these
days, which is one of the characteristics of our “stuckness.”In stressful and anxious systems the
questions tend to move towards control, information and regulation. These questions tend to; be generated by the
ones who are the most anxious, narrow our focus and serve the continued establishment of reigning
worldview.

To envision and create new communities we need to shift the
questions we ask and live.We need
questions that open us up to new possibilities, inspire our imagination and
invite our commitment as we answer them. Block says, “Questions that have the power to make a
difference are ones that engage people in an intimate way, confront them with
their freedom, and invite them to co-create a future possibility…. Powerful
questions are the ones that cause you to become an actor as soon as you answer
them.”

Here are a few these kinds of questions according to Peter
Block

What is the commitment you hold that brought you into this
room?

What are the crossroads you face at this stage of the games?

What is the story you keep telling about the problems of
this community?

Here are questions the Ecclesia Project is asking.

What questions would be in a "Book of Transformative Questions"

What would you do if your church building burnt down?

Where and with whom are you finding life giving community
and what has been your role in making that happen?

What gifts, interests and passions does your community not
know you posses?

What meaningful stories do you tell about your community?

What complaints do you have about your current community and
what is your contribution to them?

Rilke says better in a simple paragraph.

“...I would like to beg you dear Sir, as well as I can, to
have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the
questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very
foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you
now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live
everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future,
you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the
answer.”- Rainer Maria Rilke in Letters to a Young Poet

Do you want to be more skillful in your communal life?Do you want to help innovate a new form
of Christian community or transform an existing one? Whether you are wanting to
start, or are already participating in a house church, mission group, immigrant
fellowship, bible study or intentional community this learning lab will provide
foundational insights into leading and cultivating healthy Christian community.
The workshop will explore the basic theological and theoretical ideas that
support Christian Community and the practical tasks and skills for creating and
sustaining them. This five week experience is part of a larger initiative of
the Mid Kentucky Presbytery called the Ecclesia Project.The goal of the Project is to create
and support innovative forms of Christian community in Louisville KY.

03/09/2010

I have had a long journey with the concept of "obsession" you could say an obsession with it. For the spiritually life it seems deadly, but for the social change world its a real gem of a personality trait. Spiritually speaking, any obsession keeps us from being free and open to the flow of our lives and to the movement of Spirit. It can make us stiff, rigid and inflexible. But, as we try to identify creative change agents, the "obsessive" characteristics is pretty high on the list. As Bornstein writes in his book "How To Change The World: Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas".

"While researching this book, I looked at a variety of changes that had occur ed in different fields and found a pattern. Frequently, when I traced the change back to its source, I found an obsessive individual working behind the scenes - a person vision, drive, integrity of purpose, great persuasive powers, and remarkable stamina." p.92

Most of the innovators and change agents he describes are a degree of obsessiveness and determination. This leads to some questions.

Are there good obsessions? Can you be too obsessed with creating God's Shalom? Can obsessiveness be held in such a way as to be effective for social change but not destructive to the spiritual life? Is there another word besides "obsessive" that would better describe the leadership characteristic that is necessary for innovation and social change?

03/02/2010

Could there ever be a problem with the practice of empathy? Maybe so. One of the ideas that has been the most challenging to me in Edwin Friendman's book, Failure of Nerve is his critical, yet insightful, analysis of the practice "empathy." In his chapter entitled, Survival In A Hostile Environment: The Fallacy of Empathy. he writes;

"As lofty and noble as the concept of empathy may sound, and as well-intentioned as those may be who make it the linchpin idea of their theories of healing, education, or management, societal regression has too often perverted the use of empathy, into a disguise for anxiety, a rationalization for the failure to define a position, and a power tool in the hands of the "sensitive." p. 133

Progressive and postmodern theologies, and the churches which embrace them, seek to be especially sensitive to those who have, little to no voice and power. We are the "well-intentioned... who make empathy a linchpin of their theories." Liberation theologies even hold to "God's preferential option for the poor and marginalized." These are deep values of liberal progressive theology and have provided a strong foundation from which we discern and seek God's Shalom. Friendman, however, provides an interesting challenge to the application of "empathy" when seeking to change and transform a system, especially a system which is experiencing a great deal of anxiety and stress.

"On the one hand, there can be no question that the notion of feeling for others, caring for others, identifying with others, being responsive to others, and perhaps even sharing their pain exquisitely or excruciatingly is heartfelt, humanitarian, highly spiritual, and an essential component in a leader's response repertoire. But it has rarely been my experience that being sensitive to others will enable those "others" to be more self-aware, that being more "understanding" of others causes them to mature, or that appreciating the plight of others will make them more responsible for their being, their condition or their destiny." p137

Friedman seems to be advocating a kind of "tough love" when it comes to systems change. This posture seems especially challenging, as we look at where to give limited resources for changing and transforming our churches. The church, at its local, regional and national level, spends a large sum of time, effort and money being "sensitive," "understanding" and "appreciating" anxious individuals and the plight of dieing and struggling churches. And in many ways we would say rightfully so. However, I wonder if these postures of "empathy" are the ones that will help them mature, grow and take responsibility for their future?

"Ultimately, societies, families and organizations are able to evolve out of a state of regression not because their leaders "feel" for or "understand" their followers, but because their leaders are able, by their well-defined presence, to regulate their systemic anxiety in the relationship system they are leading and to inhibit the invasiveness of those factions which would preempt its agenda. After that, they can afford to be empathic... The kind of "sensitivity" that leaders most require is a sensitivity to the degree of chronic anxiety and the lack of self-differentiation in the system that surrounds them. p. 137

I am left wondering how our liberal, progressive values and theologies enable anxious individuals and churches to remain powerless to engage their own change and transformation. The same idea can be applied to our "caring" and "sensitive" postures towards anxious pastors by trying to assure them "minimum standards" of call. When did living out ones passion and calling include a prerequisite of a "minimum standard lifestyle." It seems anxiety, stress and empathy are not a good mix for empowering change and transformation. How do we progressive church leaders and systems practice well differentiated, self regulated leadership that does not fall into the dangers of being overly empathetic?